Dan Zanes takes a small step toward creating family-music empire, albeit in a very inclusive way.

News from Zanes in his newsletter that the next Father Goose album, It's a Bam Bam Diddly, will be released in October. In addition to help from Dan's band and many others, Sheryl Crow also makes an appearance on the disk. I'm pretty sure Crow never said the phrase "it's a bam bam diddly," which is now my favorite album title of the year.

Zanes also mentions that he's recording the next Dan Zanes and Friends CD, which will be called En Espanol, for release in 2008. He says it's "a very different type of project but even at this early stage it has a very high emotional content." No word on whether Sheryl Crow will appear on that disk as well.